Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The McCain/Palin campaign is furiously pressing hotbuttons now, trying to get voters to turn off their brains and run to the polls with a fire in their guts.

Last week they hammered on one of mine: "redistribution of wealth". This week they added two more to the stump speeches: "socialism" and "welfare state".They know very well that free market yee-hah John Wayne capitalists like me hate and fear those words and the intrusive and expensively bureaucratic European style government they bring to mind.

But of course that's not what we're talking about.Obama is in favor of rescinding the Bush era tax cuts for the more successful among us, and would in fact give a tax cut to the other ninety five percent. McCain has described this shifting of the tax burden as redistribution of wealth. But neither like to talk about the real point:

We're broke, baby.

It's not about a fair and equitable tax rate that allows all Americans to prosper and does not punish success. We all want that. It's about the fact that the United States of America is mind bogglingly deep in debt and if we can't start paying some of it down China is gonna send someone over to repossess the country.

And the simple truth is the "middle class"-- neck deep in charge card debt, with their retirement suddenly shrunken and kids in college on credit, is pretty well squeezed out.Its not that we wouldn't like to get more out of them. But Joe Sixpack is as broke as the government.

And, I can't help but think that we just bailed out the millionaires when they needed help.The USA needs a bailout now. Maybe if Exxon Mobil and Bill Gates would take a just little less in tax cuts America's stock could rise too.